Google’s Customer Match Offers New Options for Marketers

Google AdWords is offering users the ability to upload email lists of prospects and current customers for individually targeted marketing messages in search, Gmail and YouTube.

Customer Match, as the freshly added offering is known, matches email addresses submitted by AdWords customers to the addresses of Google users signed into browsers and other popular company-owned sites and services. By targeting audiences based on the addresses they use to access Google products and services, marketers will find more success across multiple devices and avoid the problem of cookie-blockers.

Privacy is an immediate concern with address-specific ads, but Google claims to be on top of it. From the company’s announcement:

Customer Match allows you to upload a list of email addresses, which can be matched to signed-in users on Google in a secure and privacy-safe way. From there, you can build campaigns and ads specifically designed to reach your audience.

After the addresses have been made anonymous, advertisers bid on ads they create that are delivered to recipients selected from the original email lists. For details of how to create and upload your email list, check out the AdWords Help page with step-by-step instructions.

The new product is similar to options that both Twitter and Facebook have offered for some time: Tailored Audiences and Custom Audiences. Both companies have been quite successful with these advertising strategies, and have profited from them to no small degree. Google may well hope to join in the financial windfalls of such finely honed ad delivery systems, in addition to providing users with another popular choice.

Besides using Customer Match as a standalone marketing vehicle, Google advertisers can integrate the new service with the existing Similar Audiences option to find audiences that closely resemble the individuals in their uploaded email lists, and then serving up ads to these users when they are signed into Gmail and YouTube.

Announced in their blog on September 27th and on September 28th during Advertising Week festivities, Customer Match is here now or coming soon, with the typical Google schedule of “rolling out to all advertisers over the next few weeks.”

The world’s largest data stockpiler may be a bit vague on timing, but they’re not lacking in confidence about the value of their new marketing product:

“With Customer Match, your brand is right there, with the right message, at the moment your customer is most receptive. Only Google can help you do this to delight your most loyal customers in the moments that truly matter.”

What’s your take on it all? Are the waves from Customer Match more likely to rock your world or rock you to sleep? We’re all ears.

Sarah Warlick is responsible for making us and all of our clients sound professional and eloquent as the content director at bbr marketing. In this role, Sarah is in charge of ensuring that all copy is well-written, accurate and free of pesky typos before it heads out the door. Additionally, she is a prolific writer and a frequent contributor to bbr marketing’s blog sites. She spends a good deal of time writing copy for our clients and has a unique way of crawling into our clients’ heads to create ghostwritten copy that sounds as if it came directly from their pen.

This is a very cool feature. Of course you can only reach people who are logged in to a Google account. While that may not be as high as say, people logged into a Facebook account, it should still be a decent reach.

One of the benefits is being able to target users with a consistent message across your different marketing channels. For example you may offer your email list a special discount on this years tax preparation. You can then also target that list with display ads that have the same customized offer.

And if that email list are already clients or aware of your firm, they may not even need to click the ad to take advantage of the offer. Allowing firms to use Adwords like the big guys, as more of a branding vehicle, but just on a smaller scale.

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